Sometimes, when the customer service department doesn’t answer your questions or can’t satisfy your requests, you just have to ask to speak to the boss.

That’s what the chairman of Plymouth’s Board of Selectmen did Tuesday night. Unsatisfied with the answers the town has been getting from Entergy, the owner of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant, and the response from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Chairman Matt Muratore asked to speak to the boss – the president of the United States.

The NRC was in town to report on and answer questions about Pilgrim’s performance in 2012. At the request of the town manager representatives also agreed to follow that meeting with a public forum on Entergy’s plans to add dry cask storage units at the Pilgrim facility.

But as soon as the meeting began, it was apparent the open house, at least, would not be a gathering of old friends.

On one side of the Mayflower Room in Town Hall was the NRC, standing like Christians in the coliseum. On the other side were the lions, represented by a wide assortment of nuclear power critics from Plymouth and Cape Cod.

And there were few satisfied customers in sight.

The NRC dispensed a good deal of information from experts in many fields, but it was clear that, short of announcing the plant’s closure, there was little they could say to please this crowd.

For several months critics of Pilgrim have decried the likelihood that, with the construction of the dry cask storage units (referred to by NRC officials as Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations or ISFSI), the Rocky Hill Road site could be housing nuclear waste for centuries, without any additional transparency or oversight.

The words spoken by town officials sounded much like those of the plant critics.

In all, there were four hours of often-contentious exchanges Tuesday night, but the only thing both sides seemed to agree on was that, as Selectman Ken Tavares said, “The mood has changed.”

“You have to understand that as residents we are not comfortable any more,” Tavares told the NRC officials as the second portion of the meeting began. “For many years we felt that the management of the plant and the NRC had our best interests at heart.”

Since Fukushima, though, that trust has disappeared and what he’s hearing now is alarming, Tavares said.

“You have to tell the people back in Washington, that they need to do a better job of communicating,” Tavares added. “I think you need to come back on a regular basis. You have to be here to answer the public’s questions and concerns.”

Tavares was not alone. Some of his fellow selectmen said they were even less satisfied with the state of the town’s relationship with the NRC and Entergy.

Page 2 of 3 - Selectman Belinda Brewster, who has been involved in an effort to bring all of the country’s nuclear communities together over the issue of spent fuel, told the NRC officials she needs to understand what truly is going on here.”

A 40-year-old reactor is one thing, Brewster said, but it’s another to be forced to store nuclear waste at the same site for the foreseeable future.

“We all know that the only reason they are doing this,” Brewster said (referring to Entergy’s plans to build dry cask), “is that they have maxed out the space in the pools. They have to do it. At this point Pilgrim is turning into a de-facto nuclear waste dump.”

Once the rest of the board had addressed the NRC, Muratore offered his perspective.

“This is a good start tonight,” Muratore said. “I know you have to be here by regulation, but we want you to come back because we need you to be here. We’d be more than happy to put you on the agenda on a quarterly basis, or every four months, whatever it will take to create some level of comfort in the community.”

But then Muratore raised the stakes. He asked the NRC to facilitate one more meeting – of all 104 nuclear communities in the country.

“I ask you to put together a forum to include public officials from all 104 nuclear communities, for a general discussion on these topics,” he said, “and to have someone at a high level involved in this – up to and including the president of the United States – who really needs to hear what is happening in this community.”

That last comment brought immediate, sustained applause. But that was just the beginning of the commentary from officials and the public.

After selectmen had their say, members of the town’s Nuclear Matters Committee were allowed to make statements before the meeting was opened to questions from the public.

Long-time Chairman Jeff Berger did not let up on the government regulators.

“The bottom line,” Berger told the NRC officials, “is that you guys have a problem. You have nuclear waste dumps in a dozen or so communities across the country, though we were promised a central facility.” He called that situation an accident waiting to happen.

Berger also noted that security expert Rich Grassi, his colleague on the NMC who was unable to attend the meeting, thinks Pilgrim’s densely packed, elevated, spent fuel pool is vulnerable to terrorist attack.

With each question or critique, the NRC responded, in detail, with confidence and clarity, but it’s questionable whether they convinced more than a few in the audience.

NRC District 1 Chief Ronald Bellamy assured the crowd that the plant is safe from accident or attack because of what the NRC calls “defense in depth,” which, he said, “creates multiple independent and redundant layers to compensate for potential human and mechanical failures.”

Page 3 of 3 - Bellamy assured critics the plant could withstand extended power outages, being struck by jet aircraft and many other extreme situations.

“Force on Force” exercises – in which military units try to breach plant security – are held regularly, Bellamy said, and none of those have been exceptionally successful.

There was plenty of detailed information on the manner in which the plant is inspected and protected, and the process and technologies involved in dry cask storage, but the details the NRC provided did not seem to fill critics needs.

Manomet resident Ben Almada wanted to know how the NRC could relicense a plant that’s design contributed to the disaster at Fukushima. The plants use identical boiling water reactors.

Monica Mullins, representing the office of Senate President Therese Murray, wondered why the NRC was so dismissive of the community’s safety concerns, especially regarding evacuation plans.

Jones River Watershed Association Executive Director Pine duBois wondered if the NRC would take a harder look at what she called the site specific elements that could really do this area harm.

“Everything we know and love is here,” duBois said, her voice cracking. “You are the only ones that can help us protect it. How are you going to do that? And how are you going to do that in a public way that gives us confidence that you know what you are doing?”